'Data Mining' For Drug Companies Goes To Courts

DAVE GRAM

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — The prescription drugs you take are on the minds of a lot of people: judges on two federal courts, legislators in several states, countless doctors and, at the center, the companies that make money by figuring out who's prescribing what.

"Data-mining" firms — which gather electronic information on the drugs prescribers order for their patients, then sell that information to pharmaceutical companies — have sued to block laws restricting their activities in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont.

At issue is the use by drug company "detailers" — the sales force that deals with doctors and other prescribers and tries to get them to use the company's products — of the information about doctors' prescribing habits.

If, for example, a doctor usually uses one company's antidepressant drug instead of another's, that can be valuable information for a detailer trying to get the doctor to switch.

In upholding the New Hampshire law, 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston found the result of the activity is often higher drug costs, because the detailer usually is trying to steer the prescriber toward the newest, most expensive, medicines.